Le 04/09/2013 10:06, Marcus Denker a écrit :
On Sep 4, 2013, at 10:00 AM, Goubier Thierry <[email protected]> wrote:
Le 04/09/2013 09:40, Marcus Denker a écrit :
Why do you need to support Squeak 3.8? This is how many years old?
I really do not understand this idea to be compatible to all old versions ever.
I respect whatever approach is used to make a usefull set of software portable
across multiple versions / implementations / OS, as long as it works.
In the end it will just make sure that no progress is possible at all.
I'm less impressed by someone who says that 2.0 is the stable and won't be
fixed, and that 3.0 isn't fixed as well.
Who says that? We always said that we will back-port all imported fixes to 2.0.
We will not back-port *everything*, especially
not improvements that are not fixes, because then there would be no difference
between Pharo3 and Pharo2 (and these
tend to introduce new problems, making it very hard to stabilize).
Are you afraid that by improving Pharo2 on a production-level, you would remove
incentives to move to pharo3?
No, I am afraid that the improvements add more bugs. This is in the end why
there are Problems in Pharo3. If we do
what we did in Pharo3 in Pharo2, then these Problems are in Pharo2.
But it is clear that this is a fine line: one persons fix is the others persons
bug, so we tend to be conservative.
But nevertheless, all show-stopping bugs should be fixed.
In general: It is *a lot* of work, and it is hard to get right in all cases.
But considering that: do we really do that badly?
I can undestand that.
I also understand that you need 3.0 to be declared unstable to be able to make
the necessary improvements in it.
But this has the following consequences for non-core development, say SmaCC for
example: 2.0 is the platform for unstable, 1.4 is where your stuff is stable
(2.0 if you're lucky), and 3.0 is don't develop until it has reached a
sufficient level of maturity. I will do things on SmaCC in the near future, but
not on 3.0.
What is a solution other than stopping development and declaring Pharo as
finished as it is?
No. Just admit that you have productions 1.4 (and maybe 1.3) hanging
around, that 2.0 is the main development platform for Pharo users, 3.0
is where you make interesting stuff.
And that Pharo users are at least one version behind you, and that they
would like a bit of smoothness in the way it evolves... 3.0 gives
directions; but a bit of backport to help with the transition would be,
what, just friendly to your users.
For example, for things I am aware of:
- backport ensureDelete to 2.0
- backport the replacement of Keymapping on:do:
You have 2.0 users who have things to say and who are able to correct
things as well; don't belittle them by saying "All software development
should be done on 3.0" [Camillo Bruni].
Thierry
--
Thierry Goubier
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